


In Which John Sees the Other Worlds

by Khashana



Series: The Guests at the Wedding of River Song [3]
Category: 101 Dalmatians - All Media Types, Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lion King (1994)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asperger Syndrome, Asperger's Sherlock, Crack, Drug Use, Feels, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-08 23:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>READ SERIES DESCRIPTION FIRST. John Watson is about to walk out on Sherlock Holmes. With the universe collapsing to pieces, John Smith and the Tenth Doctor team up to show him just how bad Sherlock's life is in universes without John.<br/>ARCHIVE WARNING: Main character death--but alternate universe version. We get back to living version in a hurry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which John Sees the Other Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Also for SnarkyHunter on ff.net, who requested bored!Sherlock, but it might be a little dark for her tastes.  
> In Which John Sees the Other Worlds  
> Main Fandoms: Doctor Who, Sherlock  
> Making a Guest Appearance: Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes (the books), The Lion King, 101 Dalmations.

“John, I’m bored,” whined Sherlock, propping his feet up on the end of the couch and steepling his fingers on his chest.  
“Pity,” remarked his flatmate, who was reading one of Sherlock’s apiology texts with an expression of raptness, never mind that raptness was a most peculiar expression for that face. Sherlock pondered why that was, if it was the face, the body, or the personality. Personality first, he decided, followed by body, because it offended his culturally engrained social norms (even he had some) for someone wearing that combination of clothes with that style of hair and those glasses to look so interested in a PhD-level textbook. Being Sherlock, he said so.  
“Oi, this coat was a present from Janice Joplin! And I look good in a suit! The shoes are practical, you should try trainers sometime, all the running around London you do, you would think you’d go for comfort, but no, got to look the part, no matter that you’re the only consulting detective in the world and you can make up the part as you go along.”  
Sherlock had nothing to say to this, so he didn’t, which prevented John from having to make up an explanation for the glasses, which he didn’t actually need, but only wore to make himself look clever, never mind the fact he was probably the cleverest human being alive, though Sherlock came a close second. On second thought, since John was only half human, Sherlock’s throne remained untaken.  
“I wish I had a gun,” Sherlock remarked after a moment.  
“I don’t. Nasty things.”  
“It might be less boring than not having a gun.”  
“And who are you planning to shoot? Me? Mrs. Hudson? Ron Weasley? Some inanimate object that will have to be replaced, not to mention the explaining you’ll have to do when someone comes round to find out what the gunshots were about?”  
Sherlock did not reply to this, either, merely wished he had a less sensible and more sympathetic flatmate.  
“Well, as I haven’t got a case or a gun, and you’re not being helpful, I’m going out,” he said icily, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind. He swung himself off the couch, stalked into his bedroom, and returned with a large wad of cash, several hundreds visible before he stuffed it all into his own wallet, placed the wallet in his coat pocket, and retrieved a flathead screwdriver from the tool drawer. He opened the cupboard and pried off the backboard with the screwdriver, revealing a sheet of foam with one indentation in it, an indentation just big enough to hold a hypodermic needle, which he removed and placed in his other coat pocket, before putting the coat on.  
He turned, and John was standing in his way, glasses gone, face now deadly serious, and if his rapt expression looked peculiar with his outfit, his serious expression was almost painful. A face, a person accustomed to so much joy in the simplest pleasures, should not look at Sherlock as though these few minutes of activity have caused him to remember all the worst parts of life. Even worse, he looked, not worried about Sherlock, not even scared for him, but as though he knew exactly the kind of dark places Sherlock had been and didn’t know how to stop him from going there again.  
“Sit,” said John Smith in a voice to go with his expression, and Sherlock sat in the easy chair. He hadn’t yet decided whether he was actually going to go visit his dealer, or if he only wanted to make John think he was and stop reading that damn textbook and entertain him, but he wished he hadn’t. Even having John’s full attention wasn’t worth that expression.  
John stalked outside and stared up at the sky.  
“DOCTOR!” he roared, with more ferocity than Sherlock had ever heard from him, and he could hear clearly, since John had left the door open. There was a moment’s silence, and then a funny bubbling, pulsating noise, and there was a blue police box standing on their front porch, and Sherlock forgot all about staying put and ran outside to see.  
“She always knows,” John was muttering, running a hand up and down the box. The door opened, and a man who looked exactly like John jumped out. He promptly looked completely confused, and Sherlock couldn’t, for once, blame him.  
“I need to borrow the TARDIS,” said John, or that was what Sherlock thought he said.  
“Interdimensional chaos, and you need to borrow the TARDIS now?” asked the other man.  
“It’s the only time possible, you know that. Think about it, Doctor. All time is collapsed around a single set of events. How can there be any fixed points now?”  
The man called Doctor seemed to consider the suggestion. He darted back into his box, and Sherlock adjusted his position to see what could be so interesting inside such a small box. He gasped.  
There was an entire room inside that tiny box, room enough for twenty people to fit comfortably, and the Doctor was flicking switches on what seemed to be a large central console. Sherlock followed him inside, trying to look at everything at once.  
Material of walls—texture/colour/density combination doesn’t match any metal offhand. Console—contains enough switches, buttons, sensors, and output screens to fly an airplane and more. Very haphazard design from initial observation, analysis of the workings of the machine might make an order more apparent. Doctor—looks exactly like John, down to his mannerisms. Fascinating.  
“For a machine to just appear like that, not to mention being, well, bigger on the inside, it would have to break several rather important laws of physics,” he said, trying to sound conversational and less shaken than he was.  
“The universe is a lot more complicated than you lot have figured out yet,” responded the Doctor, and turned his attention back to John. “You’re right, all fixed points except the one currently being experienced are manipulatable to a much greater degree.”  
“Excellent. You stay here and explain the flaws in the so-called laws of physics to Sherlock here, and I’ll be back in a jiff.”  
“I want to stay here! This is far less boring than sitting at home!”  
“John Watson?” asked the Doctor knowingly. John Smith nodded. “Over Pompeii?”  
“Pompeii can’t be fixed. John Watson can; he just needs a bit of convincing.”  
“You can visit Pompeii in this thing? How on earth does it work?”  
“She,” corrected the Doctor, “She’s alive, you know. And as for how she works, well, Einstein rather limited himself by writing his relativity equation in terms of lightspeed. It can be achieved, just with technology rather beyond yours, and the universe doesn’t explode when you do it, but rather interesting other things happen. Come on, I’ll tell you all about it.”  
The Doctor walked out of the box, and Sherlock hesitated.  
“He’s ensuring your future happiness, you can’t help,” said the Doctor. “I’ll throw in debunking the second law of thermodynamics for you.”  
This won the scientist over, and he followed the Doctor back to his flat. John Smith, on the other hand, was glad he remembered enough of being the Doctor to fly the TARDIS to within a couple of metres of where John Watson was walking down the road.  
“Oi! John Watson!”  
The shorter man looked round in surprise, and his mouth dropped open at the sight of the TARDIS.  
“What the bloody hell is that?”  
“A time machine. Now come on, I promised not to be long, and the short jumps are harder to manage.”  
“What do you want?”  
John Smith had the terrible thought that this might be the wrong version of John Watson.  
“Do you live with a flatmate called Sherlock Holmes?”  
“Yes, have you read my blog or something?” Well, that was something.  
“And are you considering walking out on him?”  
He received a shocked look for that; this wasn’t the sort of thing one talked about to English people, but he really couldn’t afford to beat around the bush.  
“How do you know that?”  
“I know Sherlock very well, John, and I’ve come to convince you not to go.”  
“How do you know Sherlock? He hasn’t got friends.” This last was said bitterly, as if it was the sort of memory that was forgiven during daylit frames of mind, but returned to haunt during the darker ones.  
“I know that when he’s bored, he lies on the couch, asks you to entertain him, considers shooting things to relieve the boredom, and in the past, he’s turned to drugs. I know Gregory Lestrade cleaned him up, but there were several lapses, which stopped when you arrived. I know he went to Cambridge, that he’s studied everything from the effect of most readily accessible chemicals on human flesh and keratin to forensics, weather patterns, and beekeeping, but the only thing that really works to relieve the boredom is solving cases. That’s your Sherlock Holmes, right?”  
John Watson stared at him for a moment. John Smith hoped he hadn’t noticed the lack of an answer to his question.  
“Why do you care if I leave him or not? He doesn’t need me. He was fine without me before, and he’ll be fine without me again.”  
“No, he won’t,” said John Smith sadly. “Let me show you.”  
And, he thought, it was a testament to this man’s loyalty to his friend that he followed John into the TARDIS with no more convincing needed.  
John Smith let John Watson look around while he whispered to the TARDIS and set several dials. The dials, he thought, anyone could have done, but it was the fine-tuning that made this sort of feat impossible for anyone who wasn’t at least part Time Lord. The TARDIS took off. John Watson, meanwhile, was making a last-ditch effort to justify himself. “Look, you can’t blackmail me into staying. He’s mad. He leaves body parts lying around, and plays his violin when he knows I’ve had a long day, and he’s rude and insufferable and he treats me like an object, a robot to fetch tea and compliment him. I can get the adrenaline rush some other way. Maybe I’ll train to be a firefighter. Why him?”  
John Smith looked at him sadly and landed the TARDIS.  
“Open the door,” was all he said. John Watson stared for a moment, and then obeyed.  
They were in a house. A small child with curly, dark hair was standing in the room. John thought it looked like Sherlock, but the child was wearing a dress. Her mother stood in front of her, straightening the child’s clothes and clucking approvingly.  
“But I don’t want to wear a dress, Mum! They’re not practical!”  
“Why do you care so much about practical, darling? You won’t need to outrun anybody at school. And you look so pretty! You like looking pretty, don’t you?”  
“Yes,” the child muttered. “Can’t I look pretty without a dress?”  
John Smith pulled a lever, and the scene blurred and dissolved. They were now in a school science lab. Girl-Sherlock, several years older, was perched on a stool, examining something in a tray with a magnifying glass. A decorative shirt and a pretty headband were somewhat at odds with jeans, a lab coat, and a short, practical haircut.  
“All right, Sherlock,” said the professor with an air of having to put up with a lot from this child. “Everyone else is gone. You need to start tidying up.”  
“But it’s so fascinating! You can see the blood vessels on the viscera. Is this the duodenum, Professor?”  
Dissolve. A guidance counsellor’s office. Sherlock and her mother sat, Sherlock with arms crossed stubbornly, across from a woman in uniform.  
“I’m concerned that Sherlock doesn’t interact with the other children, Mrs. Holmes.”  
“I do interact with them,” said Sherlock mutinously. “It’s they that don’t want to interact with me.”  
“Her teachers report that she drives them away with caustic commentary about secrets she somehow knows about their lives, as well as a fascination with science, particularly the more…repellent aspects.”  
“I don’t understand,” said Sherlock’s mother.  
“I told Emily Browns that I knew her shirt was stolen when she teased me about my clothes,” said Sherlock, crossing her arms still more tightly over her chest and glaring at the table.  
“You accused her…?”  
“It’s not accusing if it’s true! You could see the anti-theft device still on it! And she knew it was there, she was covering it up with a scarf! Anyone could have figured it out.”  
“But you did it to get back at her?” Sherlock had no answer to this. Her mother turned instead to the counsellor.  
“What do you mean about the science? Surely she would make friends with the other kids who like the subject, not drive people away?”  
“Her science teacher reports that she stays late for laboratories and talks loudly and enthusiastically about subjects like, well, viscera, faeces, body fluids and such. Furthermore, she asks many questions and corrects the other students when they give wrong or incorrect answers.”  
Sherlock now looked on the verge of tears, but she bit her lip, closed her eyes, and took a breath. The Johns watched as calmness returned to her face.  
“She turned it off,” said John Watson in wonder. “This is where she learns to turn her emotions off.”  
“So far, her timeline is very similar to your Sherlock’s,” said John Smith. “The only real difference is her struggle with clothing.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“You haven’t noticed?” He drew the lever across again, and the scene dissolved. Sherlock, now a teenage girl, was in the middle of a department store, followed by her mother, who looked tired.  
“Please, Sherlock, just pick something.”  
“There’s nothing right.”  
“There are lots of clothes. Surely there’s something that’s close to right. Why does it matter, anyway? Why do you care so much about your clothes and makeup, but not jewellery? And you never wear skirts, or grow your hair long. It would look so pretty.”  
“Not practical. Jewellery could get caught on things, which would hurt if I was in a fight or something. Hair can be pulled. You can’t do anything in skirts.” Sherlock had the tone of having explained this a million times.  
“But if you were truly practical, you’d wear T-shirts without makeup! I don’t understand.” Sherlock whirled.  
“That isn’t practical, either! Nobody listens to you if you look like a mouse. They only listen if you’re pretty. I have to be pretty, but not completely prevented from doing anything useful, like I would be in a skirt. It’s so damn hard to get it right!” She was close to yelling now, and John Watson nodded.  
“That’s why my Sherlock wears suits. I never thought about how hard it would be to do what he does if he didn’t fill a room, striding in wearing Armani and a great big coat. If nobody noticed him, how would he manage? It must be so frustrating for her, trying to strike that balance. I mean, suits aren’t the most practical thing for chasing criminals, but much better than heels and skirts.”  
John Smith nodded and the scene dissolved. It took a while to re-form this time.  
“With a woman’s smaller stature and lesser strength, she doesn’t have the strength to back up her natural bluster,” said John Smith quietly. The scene reformed briefly, and they caught a glimpse of a young woman Sherlock being beaten by several men behind what seemed to be a bar. She was doing her utmost to fight back, but they had overpowered her by sheer strength, size, and numbers. The scene dissolved again, and they watched as Sherlock iced her bruises in what seemed to be her house. Her face had a terrible, deadened expression on it.  
“She never told anyone her deductions again, much less used them as a weapon,” said John Smith.  
“But…it’s all she has,” said John. “That’s what Sherlock is, in any form.” He had a terrible feeling about this. John Smith only nodded and urged the TARDIS onward. The next scene forced John Smith to rush over and pull John Watson back from exiting the TARDIS as Sherlock, lying on a bed, dragged a knife down her arm, making small, rhythmic cuts.  
“You can’t save her, John!” he cried. “She’s not your Sherlock! She never met you, because she never went to work for Lestrade and never met Mike Stamford!” He succeeded in pulling John away from the door and slammed it shut. John Watson slumped against the wall of the TARDIS, who hummed comfortingly.  
“What happened to her?” he whispered.  
“One day she cut too deep and bled out. She didn’t want to die, but they ruled it a suicide.”  
“She could have told them it wasn’t. Like mine. That’s what Sherlock does,” he repeated.  
“Not all of them,” said John Smith quietly. He stroked the TARDIS wall with his free hand, and she finished rematerializing. He opened the door again.  
“Mum!” howled a young boy, rummaging through a fridge. “We’re out of butter!”  
“No, we’re not,” came a tired sigh.  
“We are!”  
Mrs. Holmes entered the scene and plucked the butter from the fridge.  
“As they say, if it was a snake, it would have bitten you,” she said, handing it to Sherlock. He stared at it.  
“It wasn’t there before, I swear!”  
“Mm-hm.”  
Dissolve. Now the boy was rummaging through an oddly shaped closet. It had three bars, one above the other on the left side, and just a single bar on the right.  
“Mum! I only see your black vest.”  
“Did you try all three bars?”  
“Three?” He turned and looked. “Oh. There’s a whole bar I didn’t see.” He produced a cream vest from the bottom bar and dashed away, hollering, “Found it!”  
John Watson turned to John Smith, but said nothing. His eyes, though, spoke pain and disbelief.  
“This is Sherlock without his gift,” confirmed John Smith. “His Asperger’s Syndrome is more pronounced than ever, and he throws himself into his chemistry, science taking the throne that case solving has in your world.”  
Sherlock walked through what was presumably the corridor of his high school, apparently lost in thought, though his eyes pointed straight ahead.  
“Sherlock!” An elderly man in a lab coat hurried up to him. He jumped.  
“Doctor Connors! I didn’t see you.”  
Dissolve. Home again. Sherlock was pacing in that familiar fashion, as his mother watched sadly.  
“They said she committed suicide. I don’t understand. If someone hated life that much, wouldn’t people be able to tell?”  
“No, honey,” said his mother. “Sometimes the people who are unhappiest seem the most joyful.”  
“That hasn’t changed,” said John Watson. “He wouldn’t know if a person was suicidal, he’d only be able to tell how they did it afterwards.”  
Dissolve. Same room, same people, but now clearly in the middle of an argument.  
“I just mean that you should do other things, Sherlock! All this focus on your schoolwork and no play isn’t good for you!”  
“I haven’t got anything else!” shouted young Sherlock. “Other people don’t like me. I don’t know how to make them like me. I’m not good at anything else.”  
“You must know how to tell when someone is getting upset with you. Everyone can.”  
“I can’t! I’ve no idea that what I’ve said is wrong until they storm off! And I never find out why it was wrong!”  
“He hides it so well in my world,” said John Watson. “It’s a symptom of Asperger’s. I always thought he must have some form of autism, but we never talked about it. It wouldn’t have made a difference, really.”  
John Smith shut the door.  
“Wait. What happens to this one?”  
“He commits suicide,” said John Smith quietly. John Watson gaped. “He never met you,” John Smith continued. “Again, he had no reason to meet Mike Stamford, and thus no reason to meet you.” He turned back to the console and pressed things as John Watson looked on in horror.  
“You say that like I’m the thing that makes a difference,” he managed at last. “But both of these Sherlocks died before they were even old enough to meet me, right?”  
“Yes, well, that is true. But that’s not the point. Yours is one of Sherlock Holmes’ best possible worlds. If you walk away now, it will be yet another one of the bad ones. Open the door.”  
John Watson did with steady hands and a look of pain. Outside it was his Sherlock, lying on the couch with a handful of drug supplies. John Smith darted across the floor and grabbed John Watson again before he could rush out.  
“This hasn’t happened yet!” he hissed and shut the door again. “The way to prevent this one is to stop it ever coming to this. In another world, I am Sherlock’s flatmate, and he still threatens to turn to drugs when he’s bored. In another, you and he lived in the Victorian era, and you were the best of friends. You never reached your full potential together, but he lived. In this one, if you go back to him, you will have the happy ending that no other version of Sherlock has.”  
“It’s still emotional blackmail!” protested John Watson, but John Smith knew he was close to giving in.  
“This is the best of your worlds, too, John Hamish Watson. This is the world where your life after Afghanistan means something, where you find a way to be your own person again, and it all revolves around staying with Sherlock Holmes. He will bring you the greatest happiness, the most intense passion, the greatest love, of any life you have ever had.”  
“You can’t tell me it’s all good,” said John Watson. “After all, he’s infuriating enough that I was thinking of leaving.”  
John Smith dropped his head. “No, it isn’t all good. He’s infuriating, yes, frustrating, and impossible, at least you will describe him so many times. And he will all but destroy you with pain. But it will be worth it. I promise you it will be worth it in the end.”  
John Watson nodded, and John Smith flipped a switch.  
“One question. Why didn’t you show me my other lives first? Why make it all about him and tell me it’s for my own good too at the end?”  
“Tampering with established events is strictly forbidden. I can’t show a man his own timeline.”  
“But you know Sherlock will worm it out of me even if I promise to keep quiet—”  
“No, he won’t, because time is wibbly right now—that’s why no one noticed we’d appeared in their time stream—and once the Doctor rights it, you won’t remember I showed you any of this.” He paused. “I’m hoping the truth of it will stick even without the context.”  
“You spent all that time convincing me to go back to Sherlock in hopes that I’ll remember the abstract decision even though I won’t remember meeting you? That sounds like a pretty long shot, mate.”  
“Well, yeah,” agreed John Smith. “But I’m brilliant at making stuff happen that shouldn’t.”  
“Why bother? What do two men matter in the context of the universe? I mean, you can time travel, see the big picture. Why do you care whether Sherlock and I live happily ever after?”  
“Ah, John,” sighed John Smith. “People don’t become less important when you can see the big picture. Just the opposite. When you can see all of time and space, you find out that people, the little things, are the only things that matter.” He leaned against the TARDIS door and it opened onto the spot from which John Watson had been picked up. John Watson stared at him for a moment.  
“Well. I’ll be going, then,” he said. John Smith nodded. “It was a pleasure, Mr…?”  
“Smith. John Smith.”  
“Mr. Smith.” And with that, John Watson turned away and began to walk toward home. On the way, he broke into a run, jumping a meerkat riding a warthog that trotted into his path and dodging a pack of Dalmatians without looking twice at them in his eagerness to get home.


End file.
